


X is for Ex Officio

by greenbirds



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Space tourism is bad, all things must come to an end, drinking champagne out of the bottle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:33:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbirds/pseuds/greenbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything ends eventually.  Usually there are reporters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	X is for Ex Officio

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [ Offworld Alphabet Soup](http://fignewton.dreamwidth.org/252237.html) anthology.

Of course the damned reporters and photographers and what-have-you were there. Ever since (almost) everything hidden under Cheyenne mountain had been Disclosed, since secrets that should have _stayed fucking secret_ (if you asked General Jonathan J. “Jack” O’Neill, but of course no one ever did) had been shared with the TV-watching public, it had been impossible to so much as take a piss without attracting an entire covey of paparazzi. Unfortunately, unlike a covey of quail, you couldn’t just _shoot them_. By now O’Neill probably would have felt kind of naked if they didn’t show up, and wasn’t that a fucking thing? 

The Joint Chiefs made noises about O’Neill’s place in the history books and ‘recording things for posterity’. Apparently the brass all read from the same playbook no matter how high up they got, and Jack wondered when he was going to have to learn those lines. Truth was, he’d trade an obscure retirement somewhere in the backwoods of Minnesota over a spot in some history teacher’s lesson plan any damned day, but apparently that wasn’t a choice they gave old washed up generals. Or, apparently, astrophysicists, or archaeologists, or former Goa’uld or good old Air Force boys, because Carter and Jackson and Vala and even goddamned _Mitchell_ are all here. All smiling for the cameras. (“All we’d need is Jonas and we’d have the full set,” Carter murmurs for his ears alone. “Sir.”) T’s here too, favoring their little entourage of journalistic vultures with Jaffa Eyebrow No. 6. Poor guy had already been through his own version of journalism hell; there wasn’t a reporter on the planet who wouldn’t jump at the chance to interview the First Minister of the Jaffa Nation.

And it was weird as hell to be standing here in BDUs and combat boots on the gate ramp. Just like old times, except that these days Jackson was working for some think tank in DC and Carter was a consultant to the IOA in Geneva and Vala had a condo in Beverly Hills and it was probably best not to ask what she was doing with it. Mitchell, bless his heart (as his Momma would no doubt say), had joined Jack in purgatory with a couple of stars on his shoulders. (“You’re supposed to learn from your elders’ mistakes, you know,” O’Neill said to him when they got here. “Yes, sir,” Mitchell replied affably, and grinned. Goddamned kid.) T, of course, had gone on to bigger and better things. Running an interstellar empire was nothing to sneeze at.

But here they were, all of them save one. The people for whom “I was once SG-1” was still their proudest achievement. The people with whom O’Neill had walked through hell five, ten, a hundred times. Saving Earth when no one knew Earth needed saving. 

This time, they were here for one last photo op. One last trip through the Gate before the whole damned Program flipped over to joint United Nations and IOA control and the SGC became nothing more than a footnote in the history books. SG-1, arm in arm, stepping through the wormhole to destinations unknown. Jack knew that was the image they’d see in all the specials on PBS, when it would have been a million times more accurate to show four people doing the thousand-meter Gate sprint with angry natives (bearing guns, grenades, or spears, depending on the world and the general shittiness of O’Neill’s day) in hot pursuit. History was written by the victors, or at least by the ones with the most paparazzi. Jack supposed he should be happier about the whole business. Back then, weren’t they all praying for a day when it would be diplomats instead of soldiers going through the gate? When SG-1 could beat their spears into plowshares and O’Neill could go off to a bucket of beer and an ice-fishing shack somewhere no one could find him (ha, and also ha)? 

“So where are we going, Daniel?” Carter asked, as if this was just any other day. Any other mission that might blow up in their faces. 

Jackson wrote out string of glyphs (from memory, and Jack supposed it oughtn’t surprise him), and handed them to the guy who would take them to  
the tech manning the dialing computer. By rights it should have been Harriman, but he’d died of a heart attack last year. Probably galled the damned press corps that they couldn’t get all the details right for this last set of pictures. 

“If I told you,” Jackson said cheerfully, “it would spoil the surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” O’Neill grumbled, watching as first one chevron, and then another, locked into place. 

“Too bad,” Jackson said affably, “sir.” 

Camera shutters clicked. Flashes blinded him. O’Neill hoped to God newspapers everywhere weren’t about to print pictures of him with his eyes closed. Vala laughed. T gave Jackson Jaffa Eyebrow No. 15 and frowned faintly. Jackson didn’t look the least bit cowed.

And then the wormhole did its wormhole thing. Ninety percent of the fucking press corps gasped; a handful of folks in the Gateroom applauded. Beltatedly, the photographers started snapping away again. O’Neill tried to pretend that the _ka-whoosh_ didn’t still leave his heart racing. Generals were supposed to be old and jaded, after all.

“Ready?” Jackson asked, taking his place among them. 

“I was born ready, darling,” Vala said with a grin. O’Neill tried not to think about the fact that this was all being recorded for posterity. 

At least once they stepped through the wormhole, the fucking reporters and photographers wouldn’t be able to follow them. Some things, at least, were still classified and regulated. For now. Though they were taking along a MALP just to make sure no one would miss an interesting shot.

“After you,” Jackson said, smiling at her. O’Neill really wished Jackson wouldn’t look at her that way; then again O’Neill had gotten used to not getting what he wanted a long time ago.

“Generals first,” Vala said, with a grand gesture. 

“Three stars trump one,” Mitchell pointed out.

Neither of them sounded particularly sincere. T looked like he was hiding what might possibly be a smile if you squinted. (Some things, apparently, never changed.)

“You guys just want whatever’s on the other side to eat me first,” Jack said. By now he knew his lines. There was a quiet chuckle from the assembled reporters. 

O’Neill couldn’t help but think of that first trip through the gate as he walked up the ramp toward the rippling blue of the event horizon. That first step into God-only-knew-what (possibly death; possibly just suffering for all of eternity). The stomach-sucking feeling of being flung through space-time at impossible speed; it was a hell of a lot worse than a high-G barrel roll in a jet. Hitting the ground on the other side stunned and shivering and covered in frost. What made the whole goddammned thing worse after Abydos was knowing that they were all going to have to do it again when they went home. (Abydos itself hadn’t been so bad; at the time O’Neill had it figured for a one-way trip.)

Fortunately (thank fuck), they’d gotten a hell of a lot better at going through the gate since then. Which was a good damned thing, since 64 was a lot less forgiving than 44, and the ground seemed to get harder with every passing year. So instead of faceplanting into whatever was on the other side of the gate, they just strolled through (“Makin’ it look easy for the folks watchin’ on TV,” Mitchell muttered, stepping out of the event horizon behind O’Neill). O’Neill was glad he still had the knack of the thing; last trip through was almost a year and a half ago now, and back in the gateroom he’d (privately) have given even odds that he’d fall on his ass. 

“Huh,” Carter said, walking out of the event horizon behind them, T at her side. Vala and Daniel were about half a second behind them, and Carter was so busy staring instead of getting out of the way that Daniel just Jack right into her. 

Frankly, O’Neill couldn’t blame her one damned bit. Wherever the hell this was, it was nowhere they’d ever been before, unless he hadn’t noticed himself getting senile. And this was the kind of place he’d think he would remember when he was a hundred years old and couldn’t remember where he kept his undershorts. 

The Gate stood in the middle of a beach covered in impossible, opalescent sand studded with immense seashells. It was night, but the sky was so choked with stars that it was as bright as a full-moon night back on good old Earth. The waves lapping at the shore glowed pale lavender with some sort of bioluminescence.

“P5X-327,” Jackson said. “Never paid it a visit because it’s uninhabited and the most harmful thing here is a six-inch long fish with some pretty sharp teeth. “

“Must be somewhere on the outer edge of a globular cluster,” Carter said, studying the sky. 

Vala scooped up a handful of the sand and studied it, no doubt considering how much she could sell the stuff for back on Earth. She’d become quite the businesswoman. Whole string of boutiques and the kind of amazing luck with the stock market that O’Neill studiously avoided asking about. 

O’Neill glanced back at the MALP sitting about ten feet in front of the Gate, recording all of this for the folks back home. “This is gonna be one hell of a tourist spot when the IOA starts approving offworld travel,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jackson agreed, pulling a bottle of champagne out of his pack. Once upon a time, it would have been a brick of C4, or roll of bandages or maybe a cartridge for his weapon. Times changed. “Figured we ought to have a chance enjoy it before they come along and build a string of tacky beach hotels and a couple McDonald’s.” 

“Sure used to be a simpler world,” Mitchell said. Jackson poped the cork; a little fountain of champagne pattered onto the sand. Vala muttered something under her breath about wasting perfectly good alcohol. 

No one had thought to bring glasses (that was the thing about surprises; they tended to get in the way of advance planning), so they sat on the sand and passed the bottle, and if the Joint Chiefs or the IOA disapproved of this being caught on MALP-vision, they could just bite O’Neill. There were a total of four stars along on this little pleasure cruise, and in his professional opinion, SG-1 had earned a little (a little more) bad behavior.

Eventually Jackson looked up and cast a glance toward the DHD. “We could go anywhere in the galaxy from here, you know,” he said, and he sounded a little wistful. It was perfectly safe; the MALP wasn’t recording sound, and their backs were to the camera. The press could just get by without reading their lips. 

“Got somewhere you’re thinking of going, Jackson?” O’Neill asked, and as he said it he caught himself thinking – just for a second - that the fishing was probably awfully damned good on Cimmeria, and it would be blessedly paparazzi-free.

“Nah,” Jackson said. “Only place I’d think of going has been gone for a long time. Besides, no guarantee someone wouldn’t up and send me a box of tissues one of these days.” Carter grinned wryly.

“My Momma would hunt me down and tan my hide if I ran off without sayin’ goodbye,” Mitchell said with a laugh. “And trust me, she’d find me.” 

“They’d probably give my job to Rodney McKay.” Carter wrinkled her nose. 

T just shrugged. O’Neill got it. It was awfully tough to run away when you were First Minister of the free Jaffa. 

“Here’s to duty,” O’Neill said, raising the bottle. 

“And to SG-1,” Jackson agreed.

“And to going home and campaigning against space tourism,” Carter said, looking around at the unspoiled beach. 

“I wonder what time the sun comes up,” Mitchell said, looking out across the ocean.

“Let’s stay and find out,” Jack said. “General’s orders.”

If the IOA wanted SG-1 back any sooner, they could damned well come through the wormhole their own selves and get them.


End file.
